The Expiration Dates You Can Safely Ignore — and the Three You Really Can't
By Marc Coleman · August 7, 2026
Americans throw away billions of dollars of perfectly good food every year because of a two-word misunderstanding: “best by.” It is not an expiration date. It's a manufacturer's guess about peak quality — and for the staples that matter most in food storage, it's often wrong by decades.
What the dates actually mean
With rare exceptions, date labels in the U.S. are about quality, not safety. “Best by” means flavor and texture are at their peak until then. “Sell by” is instruction to the store, not to you. None of them mean the food becomes dangerous at midnight.
Foods that outlive their labels by years
- White rice, wheat berries, dry beans — 25–30 years sealed properly, regardless of what the bag says.
- Honey, salt, white sugar — effectively indefinite; honey found in ancient tombs was still edible.
- Canned goods — safe for years past the date if the can isn't bulging, rusted through, or leaking; quality fades before safety does.
- Rolled oats and pasta — a decade or more in sealed containers, at worst a little stale.
The three dates you respect
- Cooking oils — rancid oil isn't just unpleasant, it's the fastest-degrading calorie in your storage. Rotate every 1–2 years.
- Infant formula — the one category where the date is federally regulated and about nutrition adequacy. Never stretch it.
- Anything in a compromised container — bulging, deeply dented at the seam, rusted, or leaking cans are a botulism risk regardless of the printed date.
The rotation rule that replaces label-anxiety
Store what you eat, eat what you store. Food that flows through the kitchen never gets old enough for the label to matter — and food you'll never eat wasn't storage, it was a donation to your future trash can.
The label tells you when the manufacturer stops vouching for perfection. Your job is different: know what you hold, keep it moving, and let the truly immortal staples — rice, beans, honey, salt — anchor the supply your family would actually live on.